


Made Without Magic

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drabble, M/M, Other, Pre-Canon, wolfstar if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6329821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your first apartment is a thing meant to be celebrated and remembered with friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made Without Magic

It was a shabby sort of apartment, small and poorly placed. The stairs were next door, and voices could be heard as other tenants made conversation while they walked. There was a half kitchen, with enough space on the counter for his favourite muggle invention, the coffee maker, and not much else.

Still, it was his, and all the better for it.

“Well, it isn’t quite a cupboard,” said his friend with a sniff, surveying the room with mild disdain. 

He laughed. “Trust you to find the upside.”

“I still don’t see why you won’t let us-”

“You should know better than anyone why I won’t take your money,” he frowned.

“- Get drunk on firewhiskey to celebrate your first night as a free man,” finished his friend seamlessly with a grin.

He rolled his eyes. “You should know that as well.”

“Yes yes your internship or whatever you peasants call it. Still, I couldn’t let you move in without some kind of gift.” He grins, pulling a package from inside his jacket.

He was horrified. “You already-”

“Shut up and take it. It cost me literally-not-figuratively two pounds. Oh, and probably a few years of my life, but I know how you prioritize.”

He took it, letting their fingers brush together, and carefully began to unwrap it. He squinted inside the box. “A… mug.”

“Yep.” His friend sounded smug.

Pulling it out of the box, he looked at it dubiously. A mug indeed, lopsided, ugly as sin, and covered in paw prints and an indent shaped vaguely like a dog’s nose. “You made this yourself, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t even use magic. Lily helped of course. She says-”

“-That things are more meaningful if you don’t, yes.” He smiled in spite of himself. “You realize I’m going to break it, right?”

His friend’s grey eyes sparkled. “I’d like to see you try.”

He did try. Many times. For years. Nudged by his elbow ‘accidentally’ to the floor, drunkenly pushed off the coffee table, trampled by hooves, gnawed on, and once thrown across a room in anger - at the giver of the gift, no less, who just smiled maddeningly and praised Lily’s name.

When the war caused him to flee the apartment and he had to collect what few things he had, he sent it skittering across the counter and into the sink. Unbroken. Without thinking, he grabbed it along with everything else.

And so it was that one morning, in another apartment much like the first, he awoke suddenly to the shrieking of his alarm clock (another gift). He flailed at his rickety bedside table, desperate to end the noise, and unthinkingly nudged the indestructible mug over the edge.

He sat up at the shattering noise, staring at the broken pieces of fired clay. He cleared his throat, and continued to stare. When he heard the tap-tap of the morning owl with the Prophet at the kitchen window, he bolted for it, uncaring about the shards ground into his feet.

He read the headline, and only the headline, several times over. With trembling hands he reached into the cupboard, rummaging behind dishes and dented pans for a dusty, mostly-full bottle of absinthe.


End file.
